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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26571973">hounds</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/snewvilliurs/pseuds/ronsenboobi'>ronsenboobi (snewvilliurs)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Final Fantasy XIV</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Clothed Sex, Emotionally Repressed Ala Mhigans, Explicit Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fingerfucking, Forest Sex, Non-Canon Relationship, Patch 2.4: Dreams Of Ice, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Specific Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Vaginal Fingering</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 11:02:34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,730</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26571973</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/snewvilliurs/pseuds/ronsenboobi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>during the hunt for the ivy, the captain of the crystal braves and the warrior of light find themselves alone in the black shroud and make choices.</p><p>
  <i>“I can give you the luxury.”<br/>“What?”<br/>“Of refusing something,” he said, and kissed her in such a manner that made it easy to push him away.</i>
</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ilberd Feare/Warrior of Light</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>hounds</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>featuring my character, morgana arroway - a former gladiator and captain in the ala mhigan resistance - as warrior of light. this vaguely uses context from my previous work, <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24665125">blood-thirsting carrion birds</a>, mostly through small mentions of an echo vision morgana had of ilberd's past, but does not take place in that story's canon. this is very much an au within the au. anyway please don't perceive me posting this thanks</p><p>minor content warning: consent is repeatedly asked for and vocalized in this piece, but given the nature of ilberd's true allegiances and intentions, this might be uncomfortable for some readers. stay safe and practice caution as needed!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Bloody hells,” Morgana cursed from between her fingers, eyes still watering.</p><p>“I’ll say,” said Ilberd. He poked the imperial’s still-twitching body with the toe of his boot, but it was unnecessary. There was enough blood splattered on Morgana’s front to indicate grisly finality, and she was never one to leave something unfinished. “Did he break your nose?”</p><p>“I don’t think so.”</p><p>She took her hand away, blinking and sniffling painfully. Blood stained her fingers, but there was no telling how much of it was hers. Ilberd stepped closer and nudged her shoulder so that she would turn, gloved fingers on her jaw tipping her head towards him.</p><p>“Ah,” he said, as though he hadn’t just watched her eviscerate a straggler from an imperial patrol. “It’s only a cut. Right there.”</p><p>She smacked his hand away before his finger could graze the cut still bleeding on the bridge of her nose. Smirking—always so smooth, pretending something violent and agonizing wasn’t scraping at him with every waking hour like Morgana knew there was—Ilberd reached inside the inner pocket of his ultramarine coat and handed her a cut of cloth, clean but stained with blood. Morgana took it without thanks and pressed it to her nose.</p><p>“Let’s move,” Ilberd said. “It’s a gamble whether the wolves or the rest of his patrol will find him first, and I don’t wish to be here when either happens.”</p><p>They found a stream far enough from the clearing where they’d crossed paths with the lone imperial to breathe. Morgana cleaned her cut with a hiss, then washed what blood she could from her hands as pain pulsed numbly across the bridge of her nose. Ilberd peeled off his gloves and crouched beside her to drink water from his cupped hands. Morgana watched him run wet fingers through his hair, his gaze on the treeline.</p><p>“I hate this place,” she said. Few Mhigans did, after everything; it was an easy thing to say, a comfortable meeting place.</p><p>Ilberd hummed. “Were it more honest about its brutality,” he said with a shrug, glancing sidelong at her—not furtive, not coy. Weighted, but not heavy. “More like you.”</p><p>“Honest?” Morgana said with an unaffected scoff—she had managed to stop just short of snorting, which she knew from past experience would have hurt like hells. She rose to her feet and shook her wet hands out. “Can’t stand nonsense, is all. I am what I am.”</p><p>“That you are,” Ilberd said.</p><p>Morgana raised an eyebrow at him; she followed him with her gaze—no-nonsense—as he stood, focusing on the line of his body above everything else. A part of her dreaded another unwanted glimpse into the paths of his fate, but curiosity was a hard thing to ignore.</p><p>“And what are you, Captain?” she asked, smoothly as a sharp blade through flesh.</p><p>They hadn’t spoken of the things she’d seen in his memories; in fact, they both had been perfectly content to avoid any discussion that might make space for it. The question dug inexorably under the walls they had both consented to build around any camaraderie they would have had otherwise, and it gave Ilberd pause. Morgana could not interpret the uncertainty flitting across his face as anything else.</p><p>“I am what I am,” he mirrored with a shrug; as simple as that. “A sellsword with loftier ideals than one man can accomplish alone.”</p><p>“You’re not a sellsword anymore,” Morgana said.</p><p>“Neither are you.”</p><p>Likely he did not mean it as a reproach, but she still took it like one: she no longer was one of the only things that made sense to her. The vaunted mantle she wore did not fit her shoulders.</p><p>She scrunched up her nose—forgetting, this time—and felt her eyes water with a brand new sting. “You’d be surprised,” she said, covering her nose with a cupped hand as though it might stop the throbbing. “This Warrior of Light tripe is just gold plating on a turd. I’m a glorified sellsword—except, I suppose, that as a sellsword I used to have the luxury of saying no.”</p><p>Ilberd drew closer, but more so than he needed to be to nudge her hand away and tip her chin that he might look upon the cut on her nose once more.</p><p>“It isn’t deep. Always more painful than it ought to be, the nose,” he said—not that he needed to. Morgana was more familiar with pain than most men would ever be, for few men had borne and delivered children and gone on to keep fighting as warriors. For once, she didn’t bother to sneer. Ilberd had not yet slipped his gloves back on, and his bare skin against hers felt unworthy of her reflexive scorn. After a moment of studying her face under the pretense of gauging the severity of her wound, he spoke, without artifice: “I can give you the luxury.”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Of refusing something,” he said, and kissed her in such a manner that made it easy to push him away.</p><p>And Morgana did: she shoved at his chest, more out of stubbornness than repulsion, and Ilberd lifted both hands in surrender.</p><p>“And have my nose feeling like it got smashed to bits?” Morgana said, rough around the edges even as she held Ilberd’s stare. “You’ll have to give me something better than that.”</p><p>Ilberd’s gaze hardened into smooth steel, determined to remain guarded even as he put his hands to Morgana’s waist and guided her—not pushed; he knew better than to push, or to treat her like some fragile thing—until her back was against a nearby tree. Its bark was smooth, the trunk wider than the two of them if they sat shoulder to shoulder, and its high canopy darkened the sky. Shadows passed across Ilberd’s face as he bowed his head to Morgana’s neck, his mouth latching hot over her pulse.</p><p>He did not linger to mark her. He kissed down over her throat, tongue touching the hollow of it as he raised a hand to pull her collar aside; Morgana tipped her head back against the tree and closed her eyes. The last two women she’d had—rare couplings over the past few years for the sake of it—were both shy and unused to women, more a thrill to charm than to fuck; much as Morgana found comfort in taking charge, it had been far too long since anyone had made an effort to touch her.</p><p>But Ilberd did. His other hand slid up under her shirt and over her ribs until he was cupping her breast, attentive to the shifts in her breath. As his thumb brushed her nipple, a knot of tension released from between her ribs. Distantly, Morgana wondered whether he could smell the imperial’s blood on her shirt, and whether she had brought this on with her ferocity.</p><p>Ilberd tilted his face up, lips and breath caressing the edge of her jaw as he spoke. “Will you not refuse?” he asked, still cupping her breast.</p><p>“Maybe I haven’t a mind to,” Morgana said. She raised her hand to lay over his through the fabric of her shirt, just on the edge of demanding as she guided it down. “It’s the principle of the thing I want. Just the bloody chance to say no.”</p><p>“You have it.”</p><p>“Is this all so I’ll thank you?” Morgana asked, steadying her breath away from a gasp as his hand slid between her thighs, stroking her through her trousers. It was easier to be abrasive, to be sharp. “Soften the illustrious Warrior of Light so you can say you were in control?”</p><p>Ilberd chuckled against her neck, his breath warm with it. Morgana liked the sight of him like this, shoulders and head bent, bowing his body to hers; she felt the heat of his skin like a flower turned up towards the sun. Like ivy—and she thought, fleetingly, of their mission, of the serpent curled around the Flames’ nest—kissing the curves of a tree.</p><p>“No,” Ilberd said simply. “I mean only to see you as everything you truly are.”</p><p>Morgana latched onto some strange, hard hope in his voice—only to lose her grip on the pinprick of curiosity as Ilberd pressed his thumb to the seam of her trousers, just over her clit. He touched her like a man with something to prove, though she couldn’t make out whether it was to her or to himself. Her fingers wrapped around his wrist, holding tight, keeping the pressure of his hand against her mound.</p><p>“Are you going to touch me properly, or do you plan on being coy about it like some green boy afraid to get his hands wet all afternoon?”</p><p>At that, Ilberd laughed again, slipping out of her grip to slide his hands under her shirt once more. He went slowly over her belly, across her ribs, and palmed both breasts with the same deliberate care. Morgana could feel his smirk as he kissed her neck and licked a stripe of heat up her throat with the tip of his tongue.</p><p>“As you like, sir,” he said, as though she stood above him in the Braves.</p><p>She didn’t, but it still made her shiver. Ilberd had found the thread in her that could unravel her, and Morgana knew he would not let it go until it was done—and the anticipation sent a thrill through her body, a thrumming in her blood like the moments before stepping out onto the bloodsands. Briefly, fleetingly, she thought of Raubahn’s hands; the last man she had let touch her, and it had been over eighteen years since.</p><p>She willed Ilberd’s mouth to chase the thought out of her mind before she could ask herself whether a lover from another life might still want her as she was now. His lips were heated with hunger on her neck as he brought his hands down to tug open the laces of her trousers, pulling them open but not down.</p><p>“Do you not want to look at me?” Morgana asked, fabricating an accusation. She slipped a hand between their bodies to push the hem of her trousers down—only far enough to bare a patch of dark hair. The side of her hand nudged the hardening line of Ilberd’s cock, but he was stoic.</p><p>That wouldn’t do. Morgana tipped up his chin with a finger, forcing him to look at her as she palmed him through his trousers as he had her until she drew a hiss from him.</p><p>“I would rather expose you behind closed doors than bare you to the whole bloody forest,” he said heavily, grabbing her wrist and pinning it to the trunk.</p><p>Morgana gave him a hard look—and this time, there was nothing fabricated in it. “Don’t think for one second that I wouldn’t refuse you after this. You aren’t making me yours.”</p><p>“Only a fool would think he has you,” Ilberd said. He looked at her, making a ghost of a motion as though he meant to catch her lips in a kiss only to decide against it. “Will you refuse me now?” he asked, careful.</p><p>For a moment, Morgana thought to be stubborn and to shove him away for good before he could claim something of her—but there was nothing to claim. Ilberd guarded himself as carefully as she did; perhaps worse. To claim her, even the way men did that was without regard, he would have to peel off a mask with which he was wholly unprepared to part.</p><p>“Not without knowing what you can do,” Morgana said, low and edged like a challenge.</p><p>Ilberd rose to it. His gaze traveled down the length of her body, and he licked his lips—Morgana understood his intent with heat pooling low in her belly—only to be stopped before he could kneel as his linkpearl chirped. He considered it with the barest tilt of his head, whereupon Morgana considered thumping him; his hold lessened on her wrist. Then he raised his hand to his lips and, matter-of-fact, wet two fingers in his mouth as he held her gaze.</p><p>Morgana narrowly bit back a breathless curse at the sight, but Ilberd wasted no time, and there was no avoiding the sharp hitch in her breath as the slick heat of his fingers slipped between her folds. A smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth as he stroked down to find her wet and wanting; his touch slid back up, rubbing tight circles over her clit with such efficiency that she wondered—slow, fragmented thoughts—whether he meant to finish her off like this. Morgana’s pleasure built, needy with neglect, and her head fell back against the trunk as her thighs began to shake.</p><p>She was making a fool of herself. Ilberd’s teeth grazed her throat as she bared it, but he was too focused on her pleasure to bite. When he slowed to run his fingers down the length of her once more, Morgana nearly bloody <i>keened</i>. His thumb came to rest at the top of her mound, gentle and teasing, keeping her burning as he slid a finger inside her—hot and slick and not nearly enough. The second followed with ease and the barest, delicious hint of a stretch, and Ilberd punctuated it with a kiss to her jawline.</p><p>Morgana’s lips parted for some thorny words, some urging for him to get on with it, but they didn’t come; her body opened to his touch, his free hand caressing her breast through her shirt before burning down her side, over her arse and the back of her thigh. His fingers curled inside her as he hooked the other hand behind her knee and brought it up—and then he began thrusting, shallow and tight.</p><p>“Fuck,” she groaned.</p><p>She’d had no desire to be held, nor to hold him, but still Morgana’s hands shot up to grab at Ilberd’s arms, fingers digging into his sleeves and the hard muscle underneath. There could be no finesse in the way his thumb rubbed against her as his fingers touched her just right, but it soon brought her over the edge; it built inside her with quickfire breaths, and then Ilberd was covering her mouth with his to muffle her moan as she came—head tilted, mindful of her nose, but no less gentle for it. Morgana shook, hips rocking against his hand, fingers digging bruises into his arms, and he kept on touching her until she had stopped quivering. She felt unsteady on the ground as he released her knee, but she had no desire to show it.</p><p>Ilberd slipped his fingers out of her, caressing through her slick, and then his touch was gone. His clean hand went to his ear.</p><p>“This is Captain Ilberd,” he said into his linkpearl at last, turning back towards the stream as though he hadn’t been hard against her hip just moments ago.</p><p>Morgana huffed. Still, she didn’t care to linger, and she’d always had an ease for moving on quickly. She ran a hand over her brow, then readjusted her clothing; she’d have to tolerate the discomfort seeping through her undergarments for a while yet.</p><p>“The Ivy’s agents are moving towards our position,” Ilberd said over his shoulder after taking the report. “We’ve got the bastards boxed in.”</p><p>He turned his back to Morgana as he washed his hands in the stream. When he rose, she had a knife at the small of his back and fingers tangling in his hair, pulling his head back.</p><p>“I hear you breathing a word of this, or boasting around the barracks,” she hissed into his ear, and finished her threat in silence: she brought the knife around, the point low against his groin.</p><p>Ilberd chuckled; without seeing his face, Morgana couldn’t understand how it was tinged with relief. He raised his hands in surrender.</p><p>“I prefer keeping my private dealings close to the chest, Morgana,” he said honestly. After what she’d seen of his past, she understood.</p><p>She let go, sheathed her knife, and gave a small shove between Ilberd’s shoulder blades. “Time to bleed some rats, then,” she said as she walked past him.</p><p>“Aye, sir.”</p><p>Ilberd slipped his gloves back on and fell in at her shoulder.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>working title: "morberd, unfortunately"</p></blockquote></div></div>
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